Relevant social problems in the primary classroom: the "cartography of the controversy" as a method.

Abstract

Nowadays one of the main goals in Social Education is to develop social and critical thinking in students and with this aim in mind it becomes indispensable to use social issues. Hence, the aim of our research is firstly to analyse how appears the topic “water” in the Almería’s local press, a province where water shortage exists and second, to determine if the topic of water constitutes a controversial issue useful in the educational context. We selected water as our research topic for several reasons: on the one hand, due to its high presence in the Primary Education curriculum which includes this item in the Social Science area and in the Natural Science area as well. On the other hand, this topic offers the possibility to be treated from an interdisciplinary perspective.

To conduct this research we have used a mixed methodology combining quantitative and qualitative approaches.  The “constructed week” and “witness news” methodologies were used as a quantitative approach and have allowed us to detect the first features of the topic water as an issue. Furthermore, using a qualitative approach, we have used the “mapping controversy” methodology that consists of an adjustment of the Theory of the Actor Network. We have obtained two maps as results of our research, where the topic of water is showed as an issue or a controversial theme and links established among the different indicators of the controversy are also shown in the maps. Both maps can be considered as powerful educational tools due to the fact that they are useful to study different curricular content through news methods and, at the same time, they allow to develop social, critical and divergent thinking in students.